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▼— fl^^COPIFD FROM FVF.RYROnYr MArtA7TK!P ^^H^ 



COPIED FROM EVERYDCDYT MAGAZINE 
MAV-19ie 



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INTOflEXKO^OUT 



Br LINCOIN STEFFENS 




WAKE UP 
AMERICANS! 

DO "NOT BE DE- 
CEIVED BY THOSE 
WHO ARE HEARTLESS- 
LY U51NG THEIR UT- 
MOST EFFORTS TO 
THRUST US INTO A 
DISASTROUS AND 
SHAMEFUL' WAR. WrTH 
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO 
WITH THE BASELY SELF- 
ISH AND UNJUSTIFIED 
PURPOSE OF ENHANCING 
THE VALUE OF THEICL 
INTER.EST IN OUR SISTER 
REPUBLIC. 

OUR. MOTTO 5H0ULD 

»^-^.J:. :/n,K WITH ALL THE 
LATIN AMER-ICAN 
COUNTRIES.. 



PUBLISHED m THE 

PAN-AMERICAN REVIEW 

SAN FRANCISCO. CAL. 

COURTESY EVERYBODY^ MAGA?,1N£ 



♦ 
♦ 

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^^P56>0J73 



65 





VOLUME XXXIV 

Into MEXICO and - OUT! 

By LINCOLN STEFFENS 

pOR five months Mr. Stefiens has been traveling in Mexico with 
Carranza. EVERYBODY'S readers know StefFens. He is an expert 
and seasoned reporter. His record in digging the truth out of complicated 
situations gives this article added authority and value. THE EDITOR. 

^HE oldest American in Vera Cruz, Mexico, was frightened and 
he was glad when we got the news that the American troops 
were to cross the Mexican border in pursuit of Villa. 

"At last!" he breathed, his eyes alight. "How we have prayed 
for it, ached for it, petitioned, pulled — plotted for intervention.. And now, 
at last, it has come. Thank God!" 

Then he looked all around us, and he paled. 

We were standing on the after-deck of the Ward liner Monterey, which. 
lay loading at her dock, about to sail for New York. I was "going home;" 
my friend was seeing me off. It was March eleven, a hot, tropical, day, and 
the solid old Spanish city swam, like an inspired black and white, in the 
saturating sunshine. The only colors that held their own were the sil- 
vered blue of the harbor waters in front and the gilded fringe of high palms 
behind the low-built town. Ordinarily, there would have been no sounds 
either, and no movement; Vera Cruz should havfe been asleep; but this 
was "sailing-day." The Mexicans 
swarmed the decks, the docks, and 
the square — the great square where, 
not two years before, the American 
marines had landed upon tha-t other 
"intervention" — the invasion that 
was not intervention. And that is 
what the oldest American was seeing. 

''This one isn't like that one, is 
it!" he exclaimed. "It can't be," he 
hoped. "This must be the real 
thing. And that was bad enough." 

He was ashore then, too, an enemy 
among his friends, the people his 



THERE IS 

A GREAT 

DANGER IN 

MEXICO. 




*^-':i.>«!s^^Mnj 



Copyright, 1916, by The Ridgway Company in the United States and Great Britain, 




people were attacking, and he had told me often of the things he had seen 
and heard, hoped and feared, at "the occupation." 

"They don't know this news yet?" he said, with a nod at the busy crowds. 

"No," I reminded him, "it came by wireless to us Americans only." 

He laughed nervously. "You're lucky to be out of it," he said, and, 
shaking my hand again, he went smiling down the gang-plank. A popular, 
familiar figure there, he greeted and was greeted by all sorts and conditions 
of Mexicans, who smiled back intimately at him. But he hurried, he seemed 
almost to duck out through that mass of friendly workers and masters. 

He had cause to duck. He knew — ^all Americans resident in Mexico know 
— the hate, the watchful, waiting hate of the Mexican for the American. 

"Hate you?" said a wild young Mexican officer to me one day on a troop- 
train. "The Mexican hate for you Gringos would put joy into the su- 
preme passion of rape, fire into the flames of arson, virtue into robbery, 
and a crown of glory on death and defeat at war with you." 

When I laughed in the face of his hate and remarked that it was too well- 
e.^ressed to be deeper than his mind, he choked: "Both, both with our 



EVERYBODY'S 

MAGAZINE 

534 




heads and our hearts, they drew 



PAINTED BY 

HARVEY 

DUNN 



/^ 




we hate you." 
"Yes," said a thoughtful 
member of Carranza's cabinet 
circle, "there is hatred among 
us for you, and it is dangerous; 
as a prejudice it is ver\' danger- 
ous. But also it has reasons for 
being, and the reasons can be 
reasoned with — and in time re- 
moved. If there be time." 
True. The enm'ity in 
Mexico against "the Colos- 
sus of the North," as they 
call the United States, is all 
sorts of hate held by all 
sorts of people there. It is 



OUR WATCH- 
ING, WAIT- 
ING ARMY 
INTO MEXI- 
CO AFTER A 
" BANDIT." 



INTO MEXICO 
AND— OUT! 
535 



reasonable and unreasonable; it is thought and felt; it is open-eyed and it is 
blind; it is suspicion and experience. It is racial, religious, economic, and it 
is historical. We did take away from Mexico Texas, New Mexico, California 
— the whole of our great Southwest; and their school histories tell their story 
of it; and their story is one of good American excuses to cover a bad 
slaveholder's conspiracy with traitorous Spanish and Mexican aristocrats. 

True or false, they believe their story. And they see that the Americans 
in Mexico, typically, and the Americans along the border, and some other 
Americans — practiJjilly all the Americans the Mexican people know or 
know about — belonged to, thrived with, and liked the old Diaz regime, and 
are openly or secretly against the Mexican revolutionary movement. They 
think that the American ambassador, Henry Lane Wilson, was in the 
plot to overthrow and kill Madero, the prophet of their revolt. They know 
that leading Americans, with other foreigners, were with and for Huerta, 
the military autocrat, and, failing him, are asking now for Villa, or any 
other "strong man," like Diaz, like a czar, like an American boss — any ty- 
rant that will put down the Mexican people, make them go back to work 
for American and other masters. They may need, but they don't want, 
the American boss system in politics and the rushing American industrial 
organization which turns out a few rich and many poor. That's what 
they are fighting against. They have other ideals, and, better or worse, 
they prefer theirs. We, sure of the superior excellence of ours, we con- 
tinue to thrust ours upon them — our ideals, our ideas, our virtues, and also 
(as they see) our vices, and our methods, and our corruption; and all for 
their good. This is the height of our offending : our philanthropy. 

'Tf," said a Mexican statesman to me at Eagle Pass last fall, "if you 
Americans would look across the border there and say that Mexico is a rich 
country and beautiful, and that you covet it; that we Mexicans are a weak 
people and you are strong; and that, therefore, you are going to come over 
and take Mexico — we could understand that. We would fight, and we 
would probably die, but we wouldn't hate you so much." 



MARCHING 
OVER DYNA- 
MITE. 



WE DIDN'T know that day in Vera Cruz that Villa had given a 
good excuse for this second invasion of Mexico. The news that 
the bandit had raided into New Mexico, reached Southern Mexico 
later. And it was still later when it became known there that Carranza 
had consented to the invasion on an agreement with our Government under 
which either Mexican or American troops might cross the border to pur- 
sue a bandit. Had we known all this (and it should have been reported 
to our consuls all together), my friend wouldn't have been quite so glad 
nor quite so scared. But he would have been scared some and some glad, 
and he undoubtedly still has some hope and some fear. I'd like to spread 
his fear. 

The careless correspondents with Pershing's careless troops describe 
what they see on Villa's trail: the burning alkali desert and the blazing, 
bareboned mountains; the abandoned villages and the staring old men 
and women and little children along the vacant way. I've been in that 
country, and that isn't what I see there. 

I see the suspicious, hateful eyes of all the able-bodied Mexicans, men 

and women, watching from behind distant rocks and brush the passing of 

our soldiers, watching and waiting for the word to come from their chiefs 

to attack, and not as an army; not yet; but one by one, as 

5^2 >, sa. snipers, till, having found out how well they can shoot and hide 




- ySill' 



and run — both the men and the women — and having gathered from all the 
climates of all their great, wild country, they can pour down upon our few 
thousands a deluge of people, mad to kill or die. 

For the Mexicans are not afraid to die. During the last five months when 
I was in Mexico scores of them, of all classes and kinds, were stood up 
against a wall and shot. I never went to see "the sight," but I questioned 
acquaintp.nces who did, and no witness said he ever saw a Mexican quail or 
even flinch before the rifles leveled at his breast; not one. 

A Vv-ar with Mexico is very likely to be a war of extermination. The 
people, the common people, all go to war there, the women and children 
along with the men. The women and children forage and do the camp 
work, but when their men drop, the women frequently pick up the rifles 
and continue the fire. So the Mexican people will be at our battles with 
them. We can get at them. And we'll defeat them. Every intelligent 
Mexican I ever spoke with about it, admitted that in the end we would be 
victorious. 

But also they say, and the Americans who know this people say, that 
before the end we shall have to slaughter the Mexican race as we did the 
Indians. If that is so, I say that our victory would be a disgrace to us and 
a disaster to the world, and that the men and the interests, American, 
Spanish, Mexican, British, German, and Roman, that are risking such a 
monumental crime — they can not have thought out what they are praying 
and plotting and lying and paying out good money for. 

And yet that's what some people are doing. That's what my friend 
was hoping for in Vera Cruz. That's what a lot of foreigners I know are 
hoping and praying for in other parts of Mexico: intervention, and the wild 
hate and the mad war it will turn loose upon us. That was Huerta's idea 
when, in despair of our Government's recognition of his effort to set up an- 
other Diaz regime, he tempted President Wilson to land American troops 
in Vera Cruz. He thought the Mexican people would rise up as one man- 
no, as fifteen million men, women, and children — and kill, rape, or rob every 
American in Mexico, and then go on into a war upon the American people 
— for him. 

And that's what Villa or — since Villa doesn't think much — that's what 
the men and the interests back of Villa thought when they planned that 
raid into New Mexico, and drew our watching, waiting army into old 
Mexico after— the bandit. They thought that that would be interven- 
tion, and that that would arouse and unite all classes, tribes, and parties 
of the Mexican people, from Carranza down, into one nation to fight with 
Villa against our people. 

It's treason we are talking about: international 
treason; treason to Mexico in Mexico and treason 
to the United States in the United States. And it's 
war the traitors are plotting. With the picture of 
Europe before them, "bandits" in "barbarous" 
Mexico, "citizens" of the "civilized" United States, 
and "subjects" of other "Christian" nations are for 
war in America! 

President Wilson says so. We all know now that 
that raid from Mexico into New Mexico was ex- 
pected on our side of the border. The ammunition 
for it was sent from here — to 
come back and be used to 



537 




shoot our people. The border newspapers had it in first-page "spreads." 
American soldiers knew and spoke of it two days before it happened. And 
four days ahead of the event the State Department at Washington advised 
the War Department that it was planned to occur. Now President Wilson 
has the information of all the agents of the State Department; of the rep- 
resentatives in Mexico and along our border of all the departments, includ- 
ing the secret service, which is very strong and very active down there. He 
inquired into this matter, and he took time to get and to consider all the in- 
formation available^) And on March twenty-six, after two weeks of inquiry 
and thought, he said in a public statement that ^Hhere were persons along the 
border actively engaged in creating friction between the Government of the United 
States and the de facto Government of Mexico for the purpose of bringing about 
intervention in the interest of certain owners of Mexican properties.'' 

The President of the United States would not make a charge of that 
nature without knowledge. He didn't give his evidence, but he must have 
it, with names and dates and, possibly, prices. I have it on good author- 
ity that he has, and that he is to be asked to give the names of "the sinister 
and unscrupulous influences afoot" to bring on a war by getting some care- 
less soldier or mob to kick that dynamite of hate that lies all over Mexico 
where our soldiers are pursuing "a bandit." I hope President Wilson will 
not publish those names. If he did, the American people would demand 
that those men be shot or hanged, and when that was done, they'd be sated 

and satisfied. They might 
" never care to know then 

what was the matter down 

there. 

r ^lL f!^ ^^ I know personally and 

^^Sf^SmT well some of the Americans 

^^^ _ and others in Mexico and 

"^ ^Mr^i* y/ along the border who want 

to "bring about interven- 
tion." They are not "bad 
men;" not "sinister and un- 
scrupulous." But we all 
know or knew of great and 
good men who are for in- 
tervention or almost 





anything else that will stop the Mexican revolution. There is Cardinal 
Gibbons and many good Catholics, and Colonel Roosevelt and many 
politicians, Wall Street financiers and business men, and good women and 
— others. What is it that makes these men and women think and say and 
do treasonable things which might cause a bloody American war? 

I went into Mexico, the beautiful, last fall from Eagle Pass. First Chief 
Carranza, with his cabinet, staff, and troop-trains, General Obregon and 
several other generals with theirs — the de facto government of Mexico, 
which our Government had just "recognized," had come down to the bor- 
der at Piedras Negras. The government on wheels was about to roll "all 
over Mexico": a rare chance to see the coimtry, the people and their lead- 
ers; so I asked leave to go along. There was grave wagging of heads. 

I had met most of the chiefs just a year before in southern Mexico, when 
I went to Vera Cruz to interview them, and they had kept me dangling 
in the cafes for two months. I had represented myself as a writer able to 
understand and sympathize with the stated purposes of their revolution or 
with any other effort of any other human beings to solve the social problem 
which had balked us, so far, in the United States; which had balked all men 
everywhere, so far. 

They had received me, finally, in Vera Cruz, and they talked to me, 
freely and fully, but hopelessly, with no faith, with doubt and suspicion: 
Carranza, Obregon, Cabrera, the Secretary of the Treasury, and many 
other chiefs, big and little, and their followers; citizens and soldiers; and so 
did their opponents, of course: Mexican, American, and other foreigners. 
That long but simny \dsit gave me a pretty good sense of the personnel, 
ideals, and the conflicting forces of revolutionary Mexico. I got, for exam- 
ple, the dregs of their doubt of me. 

I was an American, and therefore incapable of understanding the strug- 
gle of a people for land and liberty! Americans — they said— "Americans 
from the United States have a mind and a heart only for law and order and 
business." 

This doubt stood on the bridge at Eagle Pass, barring me from Piedras 
Negras. It yielded. I had made friends meanwhile in New York and 
Washington with the friends of the revolution, and they vouched for my 
"disinterested interest." And they won at last. They had to work, but 
they got me at last an order for a berth in General Carranza's tram. So 
I went along. For weeks I traveled over northern Mexico, in that slow- 
moving train with the First Chief and his cabinet, his staff, and the veteran 
generals and 3'oung governors of the States we passed through. 

War-wasted, uncultivated, treeless, big and sunny — it was like a trip 
over the face of the moon. But life was beginning. We stopped at every 



THE RAIL- 
ROADS ARE 
IN THE 
HANDS OF 
THE MILI- 
TARY. 



INTO MEXICO 
AND— OUT/ 

539 



city, town, village; at every considerable group of peons. Also, the First 
Chief stopped at and had photographed every ruin: factory, bridge, sta- 
tion, or railroad train. And they were many, those battle-fields. But we 
heard and we could see that the people, half-believing that peace had really 
come, were preparing to plant and work and — function. 

At Saltillo I quit, and ran up to Mexico City to get the other side of the 
picture. I lived three months in that ancient, modern old Tory capital 
among my own countrymen and the other foreigners, but in touch also 
with the Mexican critids of the Carranzista regime, both reactionary and 
radical. Then I dropped down to Queretaro, the revolutionary capital, re- 
joined the First Chief, and made with him and his government another long, 
slow journey through rich, fat western Mexico: from the temperate cli- 
mate of the plateau, up into the mining regions and down through the hot 
tropics to the west coast: Irapuato, Guanajuato, Guadalajara, Colima to 
Manzanillo on the Pacific Ocean, and back. 

It took a month, for again we stopped at every collection of people, mu- 
nicipal or rural. And here also life was resuming. The planting, the build- 
ing — all the activities were farther advanced than in the north. Mexico 
is going back to work, leisurely work, but with that sun and that soil and 
those mines — productive. No government can stop it. Will the Carran- 
zista government help it? What about that government? 

The Carranzistas only tolerated me. There were individual exceptions; 
I made some friends, but in general I was merely suffered in those trains 
all those three months of travel. So were the two to five or six other Amer- 
icans who from time to time were there. Not that we were not properly 
treated as guests; Mexican hospitality is most punctilious. No, we Grin- 
gos shared the good though very simple fare of the First Chief and his 
cabinet. Most of the time I was at his own table. We were sometimes 
forgotten, but we were always welcome at the fiestas, receptions, dances 
and other functions in the towns we visited. We were not told, but in the 
close confinement of the presidential train we couldn't help knowing a 
good deal of what was going on. We saw our hosts at close range; we 
heard the problems and the policies of the government discussed, some- 
times with an intimate sense of the dift"erences among them. But — and 
this is my point, which I want to make without the slightest implication 
of reproach — I was not treated in a way calculated to prejudice my judg- 
ment in favor of the Carranzistas. And this is my judgment: 

Sefior Carranza and his inner circle of advisers are as sincere, as honest, 
as determined, and — as perplexed a group of radical reformers as I ever saw 
(or heard of or read about) in power. 

Which is one reason for the opposition to him. 

ONE day in Mexico City a big American concessionaire was damning 
Carranza. I remarked, however, that he didn't put dishonesty 
into the catalogue of his faults. 
"Oh, no," he answered, "he's honest. We know that." And, with a 
laugh, he added: "We know it, because we tried him." 

It developed, on the contrary, that Carranza's tested honesty is one of 
his faults. If he were dishonest, "we" could do business with him. 

There is dishonesty in the Carranza party; lots of it. The stealing and 
grafting is most confusing. But it is petty, and my experience in Amer- 
ican cities suggests that it is inevitable. When you break down, as this 
Mexican earthquake has done, the big, orderly system of regular, "honest" 



EFERYBODY'S 

MAGAZINE 

540 



graft, the^anarchy of petty graft takes its place. The universal desire for 
easy money is freed, and all sorts and conditions of men go to stealing — 
directly, rawly — cash. It's a stage of democracy apparently. Our cities 
are just coming out of it; Mexico is having just now her Tweed days. 

It's disgusting and discouraging, and the American and other foreign 
critics of the revolution who make much of it are sincere. Their personal 
property isn't safe; business is hampered; even transportation isn't safe. 
Shippers have to pay 5,000 pesos (bribe or tip) for a car, and they lose 
goods in transit by freight, express, and mail. It's bad, this petty graft, 
but it isn't dangerous. It simply can't go on. 

The honest Carranzistas understand this. They are aware of the steal- 
ing; they speak of it plainly. 'T know," said Mr. Carranza one day, when 
we spoke of it, but he added in his patient way: "We can't deal with it 
yet." And another participant in the conversation told of a case. Three 
thieving officials were caught red-handed in the State of Vera Cruz. One 
night they were put into jail, to be shot the next day. But the next day 
they were out, and their next appearance was in full uniform on the staff 
of a general, a Carranzista general! 

Mr. Carranza couldn't touch them there, nor that general, either; not 
yet. The First Chief is only the first chief. He is not an autocrat, as his 
critics seem to think he is, or should be. His title, the phrase which is 
used always in official and formal documents to describe his position, is 
the "first chief, in charge of the executive power." Not the executive 
power. Mexico is in a tribal state, like Tammany Hall of old. There 
are some chiefs and generals 
whom Carranza has himself 
appointed. He can command 
them, and he does. Their 
power is his, too, and he has 
theirs and his. Boss Murphy 
can dictate to the ward lead- 
ers he has "made." But 
Murphy couldn't dictate to 
Tim Sullivan, Tim was a 
self-made boss; he owned his 
own ward; and so he was an 
independent chief who was 
"with" Murphy. So it is in 
Mexico at present. 

Carranza is not a dictator, 
and I think he doesn't want 
to be. He shares the reaction 
from Diaz, which is violent 
and well-nigh universal 
among the Mexicans. Only ^; 

foreigners want another 
"strong man." The First 
Chief is building his power ' 
slowly but steadily, but he is 



SENOR DON 
VENUSTIA- 
NO CARRAN- 
ZA: GRAVE, 
SLOW, SIN- 
CERE, "OB- 
STINATE." 





^^y- 



trying to build it democratically. That is one of the purposes of his 
travels. He is going all over Mexico to meet his people, get their confi- 
dence, and by and by their votes. It's like an American political campaign. 
Only Carranza does not make many speeches, and those he does make are 
short, plain, not exciting. He is no demagogue. 

When our train rolled into a station the people were there with their 
band. Every commimity in Mexico has a band. And the band played and 
the people applaud(j|d: they didn't cheer; they were only ready to cheer. 
But Mr. Carranza w6uld walk out on his rear platform, look a long minute 
at the crowd until they became still. Then he stepped down among them, 
and stood there, silent again, silencing. It was almost dampening, his de- 
hberate long silence. Some staff-ofl5cer would have to prompt them. 

"Go up to him," he would say; "he's your Chief. Tell him what you 
want; what you expect of him." 

Usually it was a woman who would go up to him first — a woman who 
wanted to find a son or husband that had gone to war. The jefe would 
tell some officer to try to trace the man, and report to the woman. That 
would start the men, and one by one they expressed themselves and their 
needs. And their needs were simple, personal, usually. There were places 
where some local chief would state a general need. At one village a woman 
said that the community land had not been restored to the people. Car- 
ranza turned to the governor of that State, asked him why not, and having 
Hstened patiently to the long, technical explanation, told him gently to go 
ahead and do the thing, and "report to these people and me." 

He never made any promises; not one. He never harangued at all. 
When the village or city put up a speaker, Carranza listened; no matter 
how long the oration or how strong or weak, he was patient. And once in 
a long while he would reply, briefly, plainly, without a gesture or an emo- 
tion. Usually he would sign to some cabinet officer or other to speak in 
his stead. And the effect? So far as I could make out, he left his people 
impressed; not inspired, but impressed with a quiet sense of his solidity, 
honesty, and loyalty. And he? He knows his people, and so he knows 
that only tune will make them free; time and opportunities. That's why 
he is so slow himself and so patient. 

He has feeling. Once a few people — not a dozen — stopped the train to 
make him a gift. It was a kid. They had walked miles across the desert 
THE PEOPLE to deliver the little animal, and they said that they bought it by taking 
WERE THERE Contributions from all those that had come to fetch it to him. They had 
"•^T^^ERY put in a few centavos each, raising thus, say, a quarter of a dollar. Car- 
"'^^"^ ranza accepted the gift, thanked them, and then turned to an old, old wo- 
man who had stood, listening apart. And she came up, frightened but 
compelled, and she explained that she couldn't contribute to the 
cost of the kid, and so she wasn't allowed to be of the party that 
brought it to him. Which was right. But she wanted to give him 
something, too, so she had walked also across the desert, to give 
him — a cabbage. 

Carranza's eyes started, but he held on hard, and when he was 

sure of himself 
he accepted 

thanked the 
woman with 
simple dignity. 



EVERYBODY'S 
MAGAZINE 
542 



STATION. 




To a democrat it was discouraging to see how little that people asked; 
how much they wanted, and hoped and trusted; and how dependent they 
are upon the good faith, the understanding, and the loyalty to them of their 
First and Last Chief. They are giving all, all their power to Carranza, 
and he is going around collecting it. And he has to have it. 

The First Chief and his inner circle need the power of the people to awe 
and check the power of the outer circle of second chiefs, and third, and 
fourth, and his enemies and Mexico's. He is the head now of an oligarchy; 
his power is military; it is made up of the powers contributed by the un- 
certain loyalties of generals and chiefs, some of whom (not all) are not revo- 
lutionists at all, but only able individuals out for individual success, not 
Mexico's. Without democratic power the Carranzista oligarchy can not 
deal now with that general who saved the three thieves of Vera Cruz. 
That general's army is his, as Villa's was, and he might lead it into the 
field against Carranza, as Villa did his, with foreign financial help. 

SO MR. CARRANZA in his wisdom (and he is politically wise) avoids 
breaks with the sources of his oligarchic military power, while he goes 
about fondling his own democratic, political power. Everybody is 
with him now, or pretends to be. Military power brooks no free speech, 
no differences, and under the martial law of revolutionary Mexico public 
opinion seems unanimous. This is impossible. It can't last. Nature 
divides men into at least two parties, conservative and progressive, and I 
could see everywhere, north, south, east, and west, in the cities, in the 
country, in the clubs — yes, even on Mr. Carranza's train, this line of de- 
marcation coming. But the oligarchy see it, too. 

"No," said one of them,, "it isn't here, not yet, but it is coming. We 
shall divide. But not yet. If it came now, before the army is disbanded 
and reorganized, it will follow military lines, and we'll have to fight it out 
with bullets. And we don't want another civil war in Mexico. So Mr. 
Carranza wants to put off the issue till some great civic meeting, 'like the 
constitutional convention. Then our split will be a political division and 
can be fought out politically, in the congress or at the polls." 

This may explain something Washington has never seemed to under- 
stand: Why Carranza doesn't grapple harder with some of the representa- 
tions of the State Department. It may explain to other critics why the 
First Chief doesn't tackle more vigorously other pressing, practical prob- 
lems, like that of transportation: he can't; the railroads are still far from 
free of military control. And it certainly leads to my understanding of 
some of the reasons why this clear-headed statesman puts up with the 
shameless, ludicrous and most embarrassing incompetence and petty .graft- 
ing of his crooked subordinates, high and low. 

Mr. Carranza and his inner circle of advisers are planning ways and 
means of putting a stop or a check to the big grafts: the great mining and 
oil concessions, and the enormous land grafts. 

And that's another reason why there is such a desperate opposition to him 
at home and abroad. 

The Carranzistas have a theory. They think their theory is the theory 
of the Mexican revolution. Their theory is that the problem of civilized 
society is not poverty, but riches; that the solution of it is not to cure or 
nurse the poor, but to prevent the accumulations of enormous individual 
wealth; and so their policy is to find out and close up the holes through 
which most or some of the products of labor leak through the workers. 



INTO MEXICO 
AND— OUT! 
543 



I 



intellectual and physical, into the possession of — philanthropists. Thus it is 
economic, not political democracy and equality they are working for. In 
a word, they are trying to change the rules of the game, their game, our 
game, the game as it is played all over the civilized world. 

Which, being felt and not credited or understood, is another reason for the 
opposition to the reconstruction of the Mexican revolution. 

One day in Guadalajara, Mr. Silliman, our representative then with the 
de facto government, ^rranged a meeting of American and other foreign 
business men there widi Senor Luis Cabrera, Carranza's Secretary of the 
Treasury. 

The purpose of the meeting was to give the business men a chance 
to state their grievances to an official with authority and power to explain 
and act. And they expressed themselves one by one, and it was very 
disappointing; natural, typical, but discouraging. As Mr. Cabrera pointed 
out to them, diplomatically and not clearly, each man spoke, not as a 
friend of Mexico, not as a social being, but as a craftsman: the banker of 
the difficulties of his bank, the exchange broker as a broker, the miner as 
a miner; and not of their big problems, but of the particular, petty prob- 
lems of that week or month. The Government had erred. That he grant- 
ed, and he explained that the reason they had erred was because they were 
not experienced statesmen and experts; their elder statesmen had served 
the privileged class and been driven by their consciences out of the coun- 
try. The new government were citizens new to their jobs, and in need of 
broad criticism, technical advice, and expert assistance. But none of the 
gentlemen present had offered any suggestions that could be used. They 
all were under the delusion that the Government was trying to reestab- 
lish the old order of things; that the revolution was merely an accident 
and interruption, a sort of disaster or debauch, and that, since it was 
over, the thing to do was to get everything going again just as it was 
before. 

And then he explained that that was not the idea of the revolutionary 
Government; that the Government wanted business to be resumed, but on 
a better basis, better for the people of Mexico. They wanted banks to be 
more useful, socially, than before, and not to make so much money for the 
bankers. And so with the other lines of business. How were the railroads, 
the mines, the shops, to be got to perform their true functions? A hard 
question. The Government didn't know just how to answer it; they needed 
help, but couldn't get it from the specialists, because the banker and the 
broker, the merchant and the miner, seemed to think that all that was 
necessary was to start business and its privileges up again. 

Mr. Cabrera wasn't understood. He didn't expect to be understood. He 
understands, better than most Mexicans, that it isn't only Americans and 
foreigners, but all privileged persons, that don't see any wrong in privileges 
or any right in abolishing them. Privileges pay. Concessions, cheap labor, 
big land grants, are profitable. That settles it. This is one view of the priv- 
ileged. I have another view. I tried it on the other day. I met an 
American capitalist who ask ^^ ed me casually where I had been lately. 




DRAJVN BY 
CHARLES SARKA 



"In Mexico!" he exclaimed, all interest. "Well, then, maybe you can tell 
me what the deuce they're up to down there. I've got seven or eight 
hundred thousand dollars in a hole down there, and I'd like tO know what 
to expect." 

When I had told him what they were trying to do and that if they suc- 
ceeded he might lose his money, this wicked, privileged capitalist said: 

"So that's their game, is it? Well, if there's a chance of their winning 
out on it, if there's one chance in a hundred of their putting that over, they 
can have mine." 

"But," I objected, "it's precisely you and your crowd that are spoiling 
the one chance of success." 

"I know," he answered, "but we didn't understand; I didn't and they 
don't." 

It may be foolish, but I believe that this man is as typical as any other 
"American"; that the trouble with our captains of industry is, not their 
evil disposition but their "special interests" and their lack of understand- 
ing, and that that is the cause of the trouble on our border and — the mat- 
ter with Mexico. And it's hard to understand. 

Carranza and his party are on the job of reconstructing a state of society 
that has been all shot to pieces by a long and a pretty thorough revolution. 
Governments, roads, bridges, factories, whole towns, and many, many 
buildings have been destroyed. Only some old false ideas, beliefs, and 
hopes are left; and they hinder. But the revolution, the military, the de- 
structive process seems to be over; it is over, if the First Chief succeeds in 
his policy of staving off all critical acts and issues till they can be fought 
out, without arms. 

But the effects of the revolution and the forces set free by it are felt still. 
Men, primitive demons like Villa, who were turned loose in the war, are at 
large; many of them. Villa is but one of the type. Then, too, Indians, 
peons, servants, and slaves, the descendants of a high-spirited race, con- 
quered and long repressed by generations of force and kindness, were freed, 
armed, and told to "go to it." And they went to it, and they liked it, and 
they are reluctant to give up vice and leisure, adventure and power, to go 
back to work. Europe will have to deal with this problem when the na- 
tions turn to reconstruction after their war. Mexico has it now. She has 
a people, a whole people, who have tasted liberty, and enjoyed and abused 
it. For practically everybody was or became a revolutionist. And all 
want land or "something for nothing," and only a few — comparatively very 
few — know or remember or care about the ideals of the revolution. 

These few are intellectuals. The practical men, being practical, were in 
with the old regime. They are gone. There are executives and organizers 
among the new men, but I noticed on the train that these were instinctive- 
ly conservative, and therefoxe not fully trusted. So the radicals come to 
the top in a revolution; the visionary, imaginative minds; and close after 
them come the pretenders: the fakirs, traitors, demagogues, grafters, and, 
worst of all, the cunning intriguers. 

The revolutionists are not all acquainted with one another yet. Sitting 



SUSPICIOUS, 
HATEFUL 
EYES 
WATCHING 
THE PASS- 
ING OF OUR 
SOLDIERS. 




there in that train, watching and listening as a spectator, not supposed to 
understand much Spanish, I could see that Carranza and his inner circle 
didn't always know their man. They'd give a tough, technical job to a 
good, insincere talker, who was not a "doer" at all. They'd recall and I'd 
see and talk with "failures" or "crooks," who never should have been ap- 
pointed. And because while they failed or grafted they had "made 
friends" and influence, they couldn't be simply discharged. They had to 
be promoted. ^ 

The consequence was things that "had to be done" were often not done, 
or badly or criminally done. 

Which is a reason not only for the opposition, but for the misunderstanding, 
of the de facto government by their "practical" critics. 

A ND the practical men themselves have a right to be understood. They 
/A are by birth, apparently, naturally concerned about keeping things 
going. Other men are born to change things and set the wrongs 
right, and these innovators have their part to play. It's an important 
part, and the world is slow to recognize it as such. But "we visionaries" — 
let me say "we" — must recognize that in Mexico, for example, it is a serious 
matter that the trains don't run regularly and numerously enough to carry 
milk for the babies and food for the people generally from the farmers to 
the cities; that the miners can't get their bullion out and the merchants 
can't get their goods in; that there is no money to trade with and no 
credit; that there is hunger and disease in a rich, healthy country. That's 
what the practical men see and say and are ready to fight about. And 
they have a right to their rage. 

But the visionaries in the Carranzista government have a right also to 
be understood. They have everything to do, and all at once; everything. 
And at the same time they have everything to change a little, and all at 
once. In the United States, a few years ago, we tackled with our organ- 
ized government the railroad problem, and we devoted a couple of years 
to settling it, and then didn't settle it. Then, here a year or two ago, we 
took up and worked long and hard at the problem of banks. Meanwhile 
other things, good and bad, went on well or ill. In Mexico that small group 
of new, sincere, honest, inexperienced, but "obstinate" statesmen have the 
railroad problem, and the banks, and the money problem; the trusts, the 
labor problem and the education problem, the land and the whole agra- 
rian problem; and the tariff vs. free trade; and the army, which they have 
to use, reorganize, and disband simultaneously; and a government to set 
up, city, state, and federal — while they are drawing a constitution and cre- 
ating courts and a judicial system ; and all the while they are expected to 
chase bandits and keep order; answer the half-dozen representations our 
State Department makes every day; protect Mexican sovereignty from 
our and other foreign governments' vetoes of their acts; permit our 
marines to land at Vera Cruz and our soldiers to come hunting bandits in 
their territory, and yet — and yet, keep the proud, sensitive Mexican people 
from resenting our border and Wall Street conspiracies, resisting our in- 
vasions and attacking our troops. 

THAT'S a bit of the practical job the revolutionary government of 
Mexico has on its hands. That's what it doesn't do well, and can't; 
not yet. And that's a just reason, as I have said, for the impatience 
of all men with it. But there's one more reason to consider. 



EVERYBODY'S 

MAGAZINE 

546 



With each one of these practical problems goes also a theoretical prob- 
lem. With the problem of getting a currency, goes the problem of getting 
a money that is not, like ours, a bank privilege. With the problem of re- 
opening the banks, presses the problem of opening banks that have no 
government privilege and no monopoly of credit. With the problem of re- 
starting transportation runs the problem of making the railroads carry, 
not exploit, their traffic, and of keeping the railroad men running the trains 
and not the state. And so, while they want to reopen the mines and keep 
the oil-wells flowing and revive agriculture and industry, they want more 
of that wealth to stay in Mexico and to go, as much as possible, to the 
people, Mexican and others, who do the actual work. In a word, they 
want to accomplish the purposes of the revolution; to knock out "the" sys- 
tem, and develop, not a rich, cultured, leisure class, but a well-to-do, edu- 
cated people with very general opportunities for some work and a good 
deal of play; and no fear and no superstition. 

And this, this is the chief reason for the opposition, both in Mexico and 
in the United States and in England, Spain, France, Germany, and Rome; 
this is the real reason why there are 
persons all along our border and 
elsewhere praying and plotting and 
lying and paying for intervention 
and war; this^ — and the failure of 
those persons to understand and to 
believe that Carranza and his inner 
circle of revolutionists are really at 
work on the foundations of "the" 
social problem with a chance — one 
chance in a hundred — of solving a 
good part of it for the people he is 
pledged solemnly to serve and — all 
other peoples. 

For, of course, if Mexico solves it, 
it will be solved. 

President Wilson has got us into 
Mexico a second time. He got us 
out the first time. He may get us out the 
second time. The third time may b 
unlucky. 

He has shown by his whole Mexican 
policy that he has understood what they 
were struggling for down there and he 
has trusted us, the people, to understand 
why he has stood against intervention 
and its consequences. 

Could he trust us to understand why 
he did not make war if our troops, sent 
there again and again to pursue bandits 
financed in the United States, should 
be attacked by the "ignorant Mexicans" 
who might — misunderstand our philan- 
thropy? 

There is a great hope and a great danger 
in Mexico. 



INTO MEXICO 
AND— OUT! 
547 




^ 



ltl';po 



29 



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